She, too, was busy with her thoughts. It was not often that a thing as big as this came her way. Sheer luck it had been from the first. A suspicion that her mother had been a little over eager in urging her to go on the motor trip with the warm hearted western millionaire, a suspicion confirmed on her return by a chance word incautiously let fall; then her unlooked-for good fortune in getting the old woman gloriously drunk, and finally the startling discovery of the whole story, and her instant visit to Harry Palmer. With him, too, it had been touch and go. What if she had not been able to persuade him to listen; what if she had failed to convince him of the truth of her story? Gordon's game had been a good one. In spite of her desire for revenge, she felt a fierce admiration for his cleverness; just that one flaw, the picking of Mrs. Holton for one of his helpers, risking the taking on of a woman once notorious as a drunkard, and still given to occasional lapses. That one fact had meant Gordon's defeat and her own salvation.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Rose]

The struggle between her old infatuation for Gordon, and her hatred of Rose Ashton had been bitter, but brief. Hatred had triumphed, and yet to-night her exultation meant regret as well. The thought of holding Rose in her power made her clench her shapely hands, and brought a tigerish gleam to her bold black eyes, and still the afterthought would come that it was Gordon, after all, who would suffer most.

Gordon was the one man she had ever cared the snap of her fingers for, and to harm him--and yet, since she had had the bitterness of seeing him desert her for Rose, there was a fierce pleasure in knowing that she would be sending him where she would never again know the agony of seeing him under the spell of the girl she loathed with all her heart.

And her own future? Five thousand dollars. What could she not do with that? First, clothes, of course. She would be the best dressed woman at Bradfield's. Jewels, too. And a little laid up for a rainy day, for Annie Holton was level-headed, and saw with grim philosophy the fate of the poor, tawdry, painted things of the street, who served to point the moral, when youth and good looks have fled.

"I'm lucky," she cried aloud challengingly, "I'm one of the lucky ones. I'm--"

She broke off sharply with a little cry of disgust. "You fool," she said, in a very different tone, a tone of the bitterest self-contempt, "you poor, weak fool! You know you're miserable. You know everything's a sham. You know your life isn't worth sixpence to you. And all because you're such a fool, with a dozen men crazy after you, you can't be satisfied because you can't have the one you want."

The clock chimed the hour of ten. For a moment she sat silent, and then slowly nodded her head. "It oughtn't to be so," she said with conviction, "but it's the truth, just the same. A woman can get along if the man she's stuck on is stuck on her--and if he isn't, she's better dead."

In the parlor of her pretty little home on Dalton Street Rose Ashton was pacing restlessly to and fro. Finally, with a sigh of weariness, she flung herself down on the sofa, and lay quiet, gazing into the dying embers with wide-open, unseeing eyes.

Wave after wave, a flood of bitter, remorseful thoughts swept over her. What a weak thing, she mused, a woman is, after all. "To know the right and still the wrong pursue," she quoted to herself. "That's what I'm doing now, and that's what I've done for a year. Perhaps, before that, I wasn't to blame, but since I met d.i.c.k it's all been so different. Now I know, and yet three times in a year I've lowered myself to depths of which no decent woman would even dream. And perhaps I've got more shame before me still. And yet I do it--hating it, protesting, drawing back, almost refusing,--and then doing it, because he tells me to. I might as well be honest. I've d.a.m.ned myself for a man who's using me to help himself, and I've done it just on the hope that he's going to be honest with me and do what he's promised.

I've done it because I'm weak, I've done it because I couldn't help myself, I've done it--because I'm a woman."

She sat silently watching the last embers die. The clock in the square boomed the hour of ten. With a sigh of utter weariness she rose.

"Life for a woman," she murmured, "is safe--monotonous, perhaps, but safe--until the man comes along. And then, the old life and all its memories are gone for ever in the twinkling of an eye, and the woman's true life begins. And perhaps, after all, the old life was the better, for the new may be Heaven--and it may be h.e.l.l."

CHAPTER XII

THE FINAL OBSTACLE

Mechanically Gordon rowed across to the darkening sh.o.r.e; mechanically he traveled the path to the road, and followed the road to the station; mechanically he boarded the train and sat quietly in his seat, to all outward appearances calm and indifferent, until the city lights gleamed a welcome through the dark, and the train clanked and b.u.mped its way over the drawbridge, and pa.s.sed from the silence of the night into the bustle and roar of the noisy, smoky station.

Outwardly composed, but his brain was all the while in a turmoil, so that some thought for which he was seeking would not come to his mind, but seemed constantly to keep just beyond his grasp. Far back in his brain a ghastly, haunting something still lurked and mocked him, and yet, seated there in the train, filled with its freight of every-day prosaic pa.s.sengers, the stout conductor roaring the indistinguishable names of the numberless little way-stations, that terrible quarter of an hour on the island seemed fantastic, unreal, impossible of truth.

He waited almost expectantly, thinking every moment to awaken as if from a nightmare, to feel some friend's hand laid upon his shoulder and to start suddenly back to life again; perchance even to see Palmer himself enter the train, and to tell him, laughing, of the curious dream.

Palmer! He pulled himself together sharply. This was no time to let his brain play him such tricks as these. Now, when he needed every atom of good judgment and cool daring at his command. Palmer himself--G.o.d! Somewhere back on the deserted island, sucked down and down into the depths of the earth, was that mangled, grinning, wide-eyed thing that had been careless, irresponsible Harry Palmer, across whose limited vision real thoughts of life--and death--had scarcely so much as pa.s.sed.

With a sudden intense effort he tore his mind free from its clinging fancies. For good or ill--the meeting on the island had been real. For good or ill--the murder was done. And now, what next? How best to carry through the game, begun selfishly, recklessly perhaps, but with no plot or even thought of bodily harm to any one, and now, almost at its ending, grown suddenly desperate and black with tragedy.

Annie Holton--he wished now that he had been more deliberate, and had asked Palmer more questions--first. And yet, in doing that, there might have been greater danger still; suspicion might have been more keenly aroused, and even as it was, the situation, indeed, seemed tolerably clear. Somehow, the girl had managed to get the story from her mother, and had gone straight to Palmer with it. Would she have told any one else? Obviously not. It was to her interest only to possess and to impart the information to Palmer. And now Palmer was out of the way--and Annie Holton was left. So much for to-night, but to-morrow--ah, that was the thought that had been eluding him--tomorrow she would know of Palmer's disappearance, and she was the only person in the world who knew that when Palmer had left the city he was bound for the island. The deduction was only too obvious.

Not alone his fortunes and his liberty, but his life itself, hung in this girl's power. To-night then, at any cost, he must see her; and to-night, somewhere, somehow, her silence must be a.s.sured.

Somehow--ah, it was just there that the problem lay. By what means, then, could he gain his end? His old relations with her, once so tenderly intimate, so fraught with reckless pa.s.sion, could he once more recall the past, and make it live again? No, scarcely that. After deserting her for Rose, and after her betrayal of his secret; hardly, it seemed, could the breach between them be healed. And even if it were possible, there again would be Rose to reckon with. Unconsciously he frowned and shook his head. No, the way out did not lie there.

What else, then? Money? The promise of that she must already have had, and, indeed, if the question came to be one of money, if that were all, though he might beggar himself to his last cent, still all that Palmer's friends would have to do would be to double or treble any offer that he himself might make.

No, there was no hope there The game was going badly. The cards lay all against him, unless--unless--

A feeling of repulsion, almost of physical nausea, crept over him--and yet, must he give up thus early in the struggle, for lack of courage and nerve? Because somehow he shrank--because, somehow, in spite of all, he pitied the lips that had known his kisses. A curse on the whole wild venture. Was there then no way out? No way but _that?_ Yes, one other way, indeed, there was, but only one. And which of the two to choose. Logic, clear, straightforward thought and argument, led but one way; and now it was plain to him that that was the way he must take. And then, in spite of him, again that ghastly memory would come; and, life and logic contending, life and logic inevitably at odds, the issue once more was blurred. Not _that_. Whatever else, no more of that.

Thus, over and over, his thoughts, ranging in a circle, seeking an outlet where no outlet lay, swung back at last, repulsed at every turn, to the same starting point. For once baffled, perplexed, uncertain, now firmly resolute, now tremblingly terrified, now wholly despairing, he sat in his seat and railed, first at Fate, then at himself, then at the other p.a.w.ns that moved hither and thither across the board--blindly perhaps--perhaps directed by the Master's hand.

Thus he sat and pondered, until the train, with a grinding and jarring of brakes, came to its final stop, and threading his way in and out among the alighting pa.s.sengers, he left the station and mingled with the crowds that thronged the street.

For a little distance, quickly and surely he made his way, and then, all at once, amid the familiar scenes, the light and the noise and the bustle of the crowd, for just a moment of time the tense strain on body and mind relaxed, and on the instant, like a flood, the inevitable reaction swept over him. Suddenly, without warning, he found himself gasping for breath; something tightened, like a band of iron, about his throat; his knees trembled under him; and shudder after shudder shook him from head to foot. Deathly faint and sick, he clutched at a near-by railing for support, and for a moment or two that seemed age-long, stood helpless, powerless, until the attack to some extent had pa.s.sed, and, shaken, weak and exhausted, he came again to himself. Then, after a moment, with an intense effort at self-control, he loosed his hold, and managed, dizzily enough, to make his way into the first saloon that lay in his path. The pallor of the face reflected in the mirror fairly startled him, and three times he had to moisten his lips with his swelling tongue before he could order the drink he craved. Once, twice, thrice he drained his gla.s.s before his weakness pa.s.sed, and then, in a flash, his heart began to pound, and the life blood all at once seemed again to stream riotously into every pulsing vein. It was not until a half hour later that he left the saloon, and then the man who swung out again into the night was a man with head held high, with steadied nerves of steel, and with a brain again crystal clear--perchance too clear. Only one thing now--one thing in the way--one thing to be done--and the entrance to his life--his splendid, glorious, mighty life--would lie open before him. No time now for other thoughts of what was past--past, it seemed, long, long ages ago--now, at the instant, but one thing remained--only one thing.

Along the familiar route he pa.s.sed, now by the park, now along Fulton Street, now through the sinister, deserted byways on the borderland of the city, and now at last he neared the quiet side street, two blocks away from Bradfield's, where Annie Holton lived in her tiny flat, a street as unfrequented and inconspicuous as that on which the gambling house itself was built. To his relief, for the last half dozen blocks he had met no one, not even a casual pedestrian like himself. Perhaps a trifle more inattentive and preoccupied than was his wont, he had failed to notice, almost at his journey's end, that he had been an object of interest to at least one person. For a young man, hidden in the shadow of a doorway across the street, had watched him as he ran quickly up the steps, and then, when he had disappeared, the watcher, in the most casual way, had strolled to the corner, crossed over, and taken up his stand in the doorway next to Annie Holton's home. And now he stood there, quietly waiting.

Gordon ran quickly up the stairs, silently extinguished the flickering gas jet in the hall, and knocked softly on the door. There was a moment of suspense, then a faint noise from within, and in another instant the door was opened, and Annie Holton, her light wrap drawn closely around her, stood before him.

Dim as was the light within, it was far brighter than the darkness in the hallway, so that for a moment the girl could hardly distinguish the tall figure, m.u.f.fled in the long overcoat, that stood without.

Then Gordon took a quick step forward. "Annie," he cried, and at the sound of the well-known voice the girl gave a little cry, partly of wonder, partly of fear.

"d.i.c.k," she gasped, and the blood seemed suddenly to leave her heart, "what are you doing here?"

There was a moment's silence. Then, without speaking, Gordon crossed the threshold, brushing the girl aside as he did so, and closed the door quickly behind him.

It was not until long after midnight that the door again opened and Gordon stepped out. Slowly, almost inch by inch, he came forth into the darkness of the hall; slowly, hesitatingly, as if in deadly fear, he crept down the flight of stairs that led to the street. In the silence of the hallway, the quick, gasping intake of his breath could be distinctly heard. His step faltered, and the hand that gripped the railing of the stairs shook as if with palsy. Surely a strangely altered man was Richard Gordon. Down the stairs he pa.s.sed. Then, for a long time he stood in front of the outer gla.s.s door, listening anxiously for any sound or movement. Finally, as if summoning all that was left of waning strength and resolution, he opened the door and stepped forth into the street.

His hurried glance to right and left showed the way to be clear. Then suddenly, half-way down the steps, his heart gave a quick leap of fright, as the door of the adjoining house opened quietly and a young man emerged. "Good night, Bill," he called gaily to some one within, "see you to-morrow," and with a casual glance at Gordon, strolled off, whistling, down the street.

Gordon drew a long breath of infinite relief. "G.o.d!" he muttered; and then, with hands clenched, walking as if every step cost him infinite effort, he left Annie Holton's flat, with all its many memories, behind him for ever.

In the little room up-stairs, the firelight, slowly dying, fell softly on the slender figure in the armchair, lying there peacefully, quietly, as if in sleep.

PART II

THE GAME

CHAPTER I

AN AMBITION IS ATTAINED

To the press, the total and unexplained disappearance of a well-known millionaire and young man about town came as a golden opportunity, and flaring head-lines and extra editions followed close upon the heels of the tragedy. Indeed, for several days in succession, the Palmer case managed to hold the center of the stage. Theory after theory was advanced by the police, by the private detectives called in on the case, and by the papers themselves; and then, nothing transpiring to clear up the mystery, the attention of the public was in turn distracted by a railroad horror, a prize fight of national importance, and the scandal caused by the head of the pork trust running away with a chorus girl; and thus, before the excitement created by this sequence of events, the Palmer case, save to a very few, ceased to be an object of interest for all time.

Verily, the world moves rapidly these days, and human life--always excepting one's own--is but cheaply esteemed. Men are plenty, and one more or less--still, of course, always excepting one's self--what difference does it make, anyway?